Wrapping up the topic: God's Law

So just to wrap things up here, I gave my little sermonish thingy on Sunday about God's Law, God's Love, God's Grace. Just to save a bit of time, I'm going to copy what I had in my notes. If there are any questions or you'd still like to discuss, feel free!

I gave three main points:

1. God’s Law: A reflection of who He is – perfection

• Laws are always a reflection of the Law-Giver
• Who is God?: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), I am the vine; you are the branches (John 15:5) (and God's more than just what those verses say)
• People were already sinning before the written or oral Law was given.
• Rom 5:20 “God's Law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were.”
• Adam and Eve were at a perfect relationship with God. Adam and Eve separated from the vine when eating from the tree of knowledge.
• What is sin, what is evil?A separation from God. As Augustine said (from around 300A.D.) "it's a deprivation of goodness that ought to be there." Good should be there, but it is absent. (WB if you weren't there on Sunday, I'd be happy to discuss this with you. It's a very important thing to understand how evil got mixed up with this world. Let me know!)
  

2. God’s Love: True love desires what is best for the beloved

• God can’t restore us partly, but must restore us fully to restore the perfect union.
• God loves us so much that He’ll take us as we are, but He loves us too much to keep us as we are.
• If a wife is deathly ill, and there's a cure in the Amazon that will cost the husband everything, perhaps his own life, if he truly loves her, would he risk everything to go get the cure? That's what Jesus did.

3. God’s Grace: The demonstration of His love

• Jesus gave himself up for us so that we could be perfectly reunited in Him.
• Why's the "Law" still there for us to look at? We can follow the master's footsteps, though we are no longer bound to the Law and works will never make up for our past sins; only His sacrifice and grace do. Jesus tells us to follow him, and if He's truly our Lord, we ought to do the best we can.